


waterfall

by rukafais



Series: one within the iris [8]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, birds are cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 17:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7448023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Omnics and water do not mix. Genji teaches Zenyatta to appreciate some of the little things he missed, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	waterfall

**Author's Note:**

> DANG sorry for the lack of updates! Here is another fluffy fic. It's important to development, I promise.

Water wears down rock, little by little, year by year. A relentless and gentle assault, smoothing harsh edges and revealing what is hidden; eroding away layer by layer the hardened work of centuries.

Zenyatta likes water well enough, but sometimes, on his bad days, it reminds him of other things that wear away metal much, much faster. Other things that look (deceptively, he thinks, though it’s silly to think it) much like water, similar enough to make him shy away. 

(He remembers, too, the terrible smoothness of other omnics. Staring emptily from the shallows of rivers, trapped in flooded hiding spots. Some had been almost intact.

Others, there was barely any way to tell whether they had once been omnics or not.)

Someone like him isn’t exactly equipped for a dip in water either, with all those exposed cables and wires - so he stays away. Snowmelt he can handle, but a swim he cannot.

He prefers to watch the sky, listen to the earth around him as it comes alive. It’s always been more fascinating to him.

He watches his reflection ripple in the lake, constantly wavering with the motion of the pounding waterfall close by. Oddly fascinated by the way it changes and distorts, entranced by the sight of it.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there.

“-a. Zenyatta, I want you to see something.”

Genji’s voice is close by; a hand gently shakes his shoulder. It’s something that Zenyatta might have reacted to with evasive action for anyone else, but - Genji is an exception.

(It helps that without really thinking about it, he’s come to know Genji’s signal - those indicators of his presence, both subtle and overt - as well as he knows his own.)

“What is it, Genji?” 

Zenyatta turns his head, curious as always to hear what the cyborg has to say. He’d sounded excited; that was reason enough for him to pay attention.

“Come and see.” 

There is a smile in his voice (Genji’s moments of joy are rare - becoming more common, but he still treasures every one); Zenyatta doesn’t question it, and follows him along the bank to where the vegetation grows dense and thick.

They wait for half an hour for the reeds to stir; some kind of duck paddles out suspiciously, eyeing them for a moment before deciding they’re not a threat. It’s followed by six fuzzy, smaller birds - its own kind, Zenyatta presumes - who make strange sounds, crying for their parent’s attention.

Zenyatta watches them, utterly charmed by their odd sounds and clumsy movements. But they swim smoothly, even so; they’re born to the water, and take well to it. Their parental unit guides them into the lake proper, paddling serenely as they kick their tiny, frail legs and only occasionally struggle to keep up.

(Genji watches Zenyatta rather than the ducks, pleased to notice the lack of tension in his frame, his changing mood. He pays more attention to the omnic’s moods, now; he doesn’t know when it started, really, but it’s not something he’s about to stop.)

“I knew you would like them,” Genji says, with satisfaction. He’s seated himself by Zenyatta’s side, comfortably close to the omnic. “Have you ever seen ducks before?”

“Is that what they are called? I never knew,” Zenyatta answers, still watching them paddle frantically after their parent. “I saw them, flying, but I never saw them land. What are the little ones called? I know humans must have a name for them.”

(He shies away from water, in his own, strange way. It’s something that Genji finds odd, but understandable, he thinks; he has always volunteered to fish what few omnics had ended up in a river or trapped in some half-flooded pocket out of it, so they could be buried properly, to save Zenyatta from the task.

Sometimes he seems strange and melancholy when he gazes at rivers or lakes; the omnic vastly prefers to look up at the sky. One day, he’ll find the courage to ask what Zenyatta is thinking.)

“Ducklings,” Genji replies, turning his attention to the little specks of yellow bobbing up and down on the lake. 

“Ducklings...I see.” Zenyatta says it with such a somber tone that Genji almost laughs. But it would make sense, that he doesn’t know, so he chokes it down. It’s not the time for laughter, yet.

They pass a pleasant afternoon watching birds land on the lake; Genji points them out and identifies them as well as he can. Despite his attentions and affections focused elsewhere when he was human still, he'd seen many birds often enough to be able to recognise them. Such knowledge had been quickly forgotten, but now he has nothing better to do, it resurfaces.

It’s nice. 

(And Genji is glad to have distracted Zenyatta, even temporarily, from whatever he had been thinking then, staring into the lake.)


End file.
